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28DL Member

A first report from me! Apologies in advance for the photos, nothing fancy here, just a point and click Cannon Ixus came with us on this explore as I don't think anything else would have fared too well down here....
- Visited by me and Misterlister.

Walkham & Poldice Mine, Dartmoor

I've found very little info on ths place, finding its name alone took a while. I'm unsure when it was first mined but all activity seemed to have ceased by the late 1800's. Its a Tin, Copper and Lead mine primarily but there was also plenty of Quartz as we looked around. There are a number of small open shafts and adits, with the main adit being bricked up (ish), all spread out along the side of a fairly steep river valley.

On with the photos:

Remains of a narrow gauge throughout

At the far end of our adit it had all collapsed in - and the rest looked like it would go fairly soon...

Where a shaft meets the adit and keeps going down... While we were about to hop around the shaft to keep going straight, there was a somewhat un-nerving 20sec or so loud rumbling/rushing sound from further in. Not what you want to hear! Somthing underneath us had clearly given way....

Remains of a metal kettle and some old glass bottles

With our passage ahead now blocked we doubled back and found another adit into the mine further along the valley side, with some equally eroded supports just about holding it together

Eventually, after crossing some dubious false floors, whichever way we went ended up going down into a flooded section

The side tunnels got smaller and smaller and less and less stable....

And on finding this support holding back a few tonnes of rubble with signs of a recent cave in just ahead, we turned back and headed for the surface whilst we could!

We had a look around all the dry tunnels that didn't require any rope work to access. There were numerous other shafts off the mines main adit though and definitley at least one lower level to explore but that'll be for a return visit with rope and SRT gear - And only if you fancy braving a level that sounded like it was collapsing beneath us....